They're all sorry now. But it's much too late

We boobed,” says the latest Marks & Spencer advertising campaign. The high street store has just agreed to stop charging £2 extra for larger bras, after a campaign by a group called Busts 4 Justice. As the chairman, Sir Stuart Rose, admitted: “We were wrong.”

I am not sure whether any MPs have claimed ladies' lingerie on their parliamentary expenses, or indeed whether it was size DD or above, but politicians have certainly been extraordinarily slow to understand the scale of public anger and to apologise for what has gone on.

The row over M&S underwear was, according to the headline writers, a storm in a D-cup. Not so the revelations about MPs' expenses, which are now tapping into a wider public mood of disenchantment…